Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Grandma's Recipes - Sunday Sauce and Peach Torte

My maternal grandmother was a tiny little spitfire of a woman.  Standing only 4' 8" tall, she had a burst of red hair and cat eye shaped glasses, that were pointy at the outer corners.  In stark contrast, my paternal grandmother was tall and broad through the hips, with a size 10 foot that was wider than the average shoe.  As a child, I remember seeing odd looking wood stretchers sitting in her shoes at night. She told me that she used those to help break in her shoes and make them more flexible and comfortable.  Being gifted with my own size 11 feet, I now understand that she simply did that to make her shoes fit her out sized feet.

In further contrast, my grandmothers were radically different in personality.  My paternal grandmother or "Nan" as we called her (short for nanny) was a gentle soul.  Her skin was always softly perfumed, as if freshly dusted by one of the powder puffs that sat on her dresser.  Always dressed to the nines in a dress, jewelry and a heeled shoe, she carried herself with a grace that belied her modest lifestyle as the wife of a mechanic and mother to five children.  Later in life, I came to learn that she had been pregnant nine times, only five of those pregnancies carried to term.

My maternal grandmother was a trust fund baby.  The daughter of a lawyer, her mother had died in the flu outbreak of 1918 in New York City.  This left my grandmother to be taken care of by a series of aunts and relatives while my great grandfather worked.  When she married my grandfather, it was her trust fund that purchased their house in the tony neighborhood of Garden City, with the reason for moving there, "the Parish" or church that was part of the larger Rockville Center Diocese. She ruled her house with  with equal parts love and authority.  She never felt small to me, as her personality, fiery red hair and generous smile made her seem larger than life.

These two ladies both died early in my life; my grandma when I was four and my nan when I was twelve.  This makes me extraordinarily grateful that my own children (both out of their teens), have my mom in their life.  Sadly, their grandma on their dad's side, passed away in 2012.

My grandmothers were both instrumental in my love for food and cooking, each being an anchor in my early memories of family dinners and contributors to my personal play list of favorite foods.

This Mother's Day, we honor all the moms and grandmothers, past and present that have graced our lives, built our families and stocked our memories with rich, happy nostalgia.  Here are two recipes from a family cookbook that I wrote last year.  The purpose of the book was to hold on to the strong food traditions that are part of my blended family.  These recipes are humble and delicious and are foundational to who I am as a cook and a mother.

With love...

Sunday Sauce with Meatballs and Sausage 


Serves 8 to 10

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Sausage:
1 ½ pounds sweet Italian sausage, about 6 links (or a mix of hot and sweet)
1 tablespoon olive oil
Sprinkle of salt
Sprinkle of pepper
Sprinkle of Italian seasoning

Meatballs: (makes about 16)
4 slices of white or wheat bread, crusts removed
1/3 cup whole milk
2 pounds ground beef (80/20 is best)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning blend
2/3 cup Pecorino Romano Cheese
2 large cloves garlic, minced finely
3 tablespoons flat leaf Italian Parsley, chopped finely
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
4 tablespoons olive oil


Sauce:
2 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 cup red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
2 29 ounce cans tomato puree (I use Redpack brand)
1 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes (Redpack)
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
1 teaspoon sugar (*optional, see footnote)
1 dried bay leaf
2 teaspoons Italian seasoning blend
1 sprig of fresh basil (a stalk with approximately 6 – 8 leaves)
3 tablespoons flat leaf Italian parsley, chopped finely
3-4 basil leaves, chopped (these get added at the last 20 minutes of cooking)


Put the Sausages in a pie plate or small roasting pan and drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper and Italian Seasoning. Put them in the oven for 25-30 minutes to brown while you make and brown the meatballs.  You could cook them on the stove top after browning the balls, but I find that this step saves time and produces a nice result.

In a small bowl, soak the bread in the milk.  Squeeze it with your hands to make a paste.  If there is a lot of excess milk when you squeeze the bread, you can dump it out.  The goal is to just moisten the bread.

Add the beef, eggs, Italian Seasoning, Pecorino Romano, Garlic, Parsley, Salt and Pepper to a large bowl.  Add in the bread and milk mix.  Mix well with your hands, being careful not to overwork the mix.  You want to get it just blended.  Set aside.

Add the olive oil to a large, heavy bottomed pot and heat on medium until it just starts to shimmer.  Brown the meatballs in the olive oil on all sides, being careful not to over-crowd the pan (you want an inch of space between each ball, so work in batches if needed).  Once the meatballs are browned on all sides, remove them to a plate lined with a paper towel.  Lower the heat to medium low.

Open all your cans of tomatoes and set aside. You want these at the ready, so that you can add them immediately after the garlic sautés. This will prevent you from burning the finely minced garlic.

Add the onion to the olive oil and meatball drippings at the bottom of the sauce pan. Sauté for a few minutes until the onion starts to get translucent.  Add the garlic and sauté for 30 seconds.  You want to release the aroma from the garlic, not brown or (heaven forbid) burn it.  As soon as the garlic smell hits your nostrils, turn up the heat to med-high and immediately dump the first can of puree into the pot.  Cook and scrape the bottom of the pan to pull up the crusted meat bits and incorporate into the sauce.  Lower the heat to medium low and add the other 2 cans of tomato product.

Stir to incorporate and make sure that the sauce is at a very low, ploppy simmer.  Adjust your temperature if needed.  Add the salt, black pepper, red pepper, sugar, bay leaf, Italian Seasoning and stir to combine.  Take the stalk of basil and lay the leaves across your palm. Smack the basil in your palm with your free hand (smack it like it owes you money) and throw it in the pot.  This releases the oils of the basil and gets out any pent up frustrations.  Stir it in.

Add the browned meatballs and sausages to the pot and stir gently to submerge all meat.
Cook covered, on low heat, at a slow, ploppy simmer for 2-4 hours. The more you cook it, the better it gets.  Check it every hour or so and give a gentle stir, making sure that the bottom is not burning.  Taste for seasoning and adjust as needed.

Twenty minutes before you are ready to serve, fish out the basil stalk and add the chopped parsley and remaining fresh chopped basil.   Continue cooking until ready to serve.


Hungarian Peach Torte


Serves 6 to 8

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Crust:
1 ¼ cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, cold and cut into cubes
½ teaspoon lemon zest, grated
1 egg yolk (set the white aside for the filling)

Filling:
6 medium peaches, peeled and sliced thinly
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg white, beaten stiff


Sift flour, sugar and salt into a mixing bowl.  Add butter to bowl.  Using two knives or a pastry blender cut the butter into the dry ingredients.  Add the lemon rind and egg yolk and work in with fingers until the mixture comes together and is dough-like.
Press the dough into the bottom of a buttered 8 or 9” spring form pan. Press it up the sides by an inch to form a lip around the crust. Set aside.

Friday, April 19, 2019

Poppin Off About Cake Pops

When cake pops first started to be a thing, I remember thinking that they were cute but underwhelming.   If you read my post about chocolate chip cookies (here), then you will know that I like my desserts like I like my men...big and rich (well, not really true about the men, but defintiely true about the cookies.  Anywho...)    Why on earth would I want to eat a tablespoon of cake, covered in waxy white chocolate?  The concept was unappealing from every angle.

Then, a couple of weeks back, I was out to lunch, running errands and I got a hankerin for a cup of coffee.  I stopped in to a Starbucks near my office and while waiting on line, had a crazy yen for something sweet.  I peered into the display case and in the bottom righthand corner, I spotted a white cakepop with yellow stripes.  The color alone was springy and eyecatching and when I read the label, I knew I had to have it.  It was a Lemon Cake Pop.  I felt like this might be a little better than your average cake pop and might taste less like a crayon than other cake pops that I had tried in the past.

After waiting an inordinate amount of time for the shit-show trio of baristas behind the counter to take care of the one person in front of me,  I stepped up and ordered an iced latte and a lemon cake pop.  Filled with anticipation for my treat, I waited patiently while the twelve year old serving me searched for the cake pop intermittently between gossiping with his co-worker.  Really Sparky, if you can't wait until break time to shit-talk your coworker, then perhaps you should start a YouTube drama channel and leave the service industry in your barely post-pubescent wake.  Finally, after fiddling, futzing and spilling the tea to his friend, he emerged to tell me that they didn't have anymore lemon cake pops.  Damn it!  Here I was, ready to open my heart to a cake pop and there were none left.  My youthful server tilted his head and a lock of pomaded hair fell in front of his eye.  He flipped it back with a toss, looked toward the ceiling and with an empty, Bieber-esque gaze said, "we only have the birthday cake pop".

At this point, I was on the verge of returning back to work late, so I hastily agreed to the birthday cake pop, knowing full well that I was going to hate it more than I hate brussel sprouts. I grabbed my coffee and pop and sprinted out the door to my car.  I pulled the pink coated pop from the bag that the Beibs dropped it into and I examined it closely before taking a bite.  It was a pretty, soft pink hue and sprayed with a light smattering of white non-pariells and though not as Spring-like as the lemon cake pop, it did give me some seasonal feels.

I hastily snuck a bite of the pop and I swear my eyes pinballed around in my head.  It was delicious.  The coating did not taste like it was straight out of the Crayola 64 box and the center, while sweet, was not unbearably so. I held up from pulling out of the parking spot to allow myself the additional two bites that it took to finish the cake pop. If not for the confines of my dreaded nine to five, I would have run back in and purchased two more, but I was late and needed to get on the move.

Today is  April 19th (actually the 20th since it's 2 AM EST) and I am typing this with splotches of hot pink dyed white chocolate spread across my face like some kind of twisted, Willy Wonka acne and a completed display of cake pops, poised and ready for Easter lunch.  Ok, so I made the pops in a state of inebriation brought on by Sangria, Rioja and Brunello (don't judge. Like you've never drunk baked).  And, they are not the most symetrical of pops, but damn if they aren't tasty and double damn if they aren't hella cute.  See for yourself:



Best wishes for a festive holiday weekend!





Thursday, April 11, 2019

The Quaker Oats Guy Can Bite Me

Filed under: No good deed goes unpunished...

Two weeks ago I got an e-mail about a corporate fund raiser event.  The company I work for has an admirable track record for supporting worthy causes and there is always a run or a walk or a gift basket raffle that you can participate in and/or donate to.  Me?  I'm more often a donor rather than a runner because,  sweating next to your co-workers? Ew.  But this particular email looked like something that I could actually contribute to in more than just a financial capacity.  The company was holding a bake sale!  Now we're talking!

Immediately I looked away from my work and began imagining what grandiose delights I could whip up for public consumption.  Pinterest and Instagram were being flooded with pastel colored goodies for Easter and Spring and there were more rainbow sprinkles and glitter than a dressing room at DragCon.  Besotted with more ideas than I could ever execute, I tucked a few favorite ideas away and decided that I would choose my treat closer to the day of the sale.

Fast-forward to shopping day on the weekend before the sale and my thoughts turned back to the my potential baked good.  As I started to imagine how I would bake and package some of the treats in the little black baking book in my head, the sexier options started to fall away. The treat needed to be sturdy, single serving, easy to transport (anything with icing was out) and it needed to have mass appeal.  The goal here was to raise money for charity, not to bake a hazelnut dacquoise masterpiece, dusted with icing sugar and garnished with a brown butter coconut tuille (which hello, you had me at brown butter).  So what did I decide on? A chocolate chip cookie. I know, I know not interesting and there would be so many at the sale that they could potentially go un-touched.  Nevertheless, I remained un-deterred and thought about how I might differentiate.

I know that when I reach for a chocolate chip cookie, I have certain criteria.  First off, I like a cookie that's the size of a dinner plate.  If it doesn't look like I am biting into a planet, then why bother?  The cookie needs to be brown around the edges and bottom and soft (but not raw) in the middle and the taste of the butter and chocolate need to make my knees buckle.  That is the cookie that I set out to make; big, brown, buttery and dripping with rich chocolate.

The packaging needed consideration as well, because these people would be porting treats back to their desks and that thought of an exposed cookie sitting on a napkin set my germophobia alight to the tune of a five alarm blaze.  I had purchased beautiful glassine bags at the Paper Source a while back, anticipating just such an occasion and decided that I would put them into play.  I purchased gold stickers and a teal colored Sharpie to write on them and had my packaging all set. Simple, chic and most of all, hygienic.

This morning, I awoke with the intent of organizing my bagged and tagged cookies for transport and display.  Because my dog is a 70 lb behemoth with 3 foot long legs (no lie, they are as long as baseball bats), I had constructed a wall of boxes and cartons to block him from getting at the cookies that were laid out on the counter.  I began  to pack all the boxes of mac and cheese and tall cartons of chicken stock back into my pantry.  The last item I picked up was a carton of steel cut oats, you know the kind with the Barbara Bush look-alike wearing a Boy George hat?  Well, I guess I did not grab it carefully and the top came off and the oats went FLYING. I emphasize the word "flying" because they had to have wings to have reached the distant places in my kitchen and den that they landed.  I now know the true definition of "far and wide".  I spent 30 minutes vacuuming and moving furniture to get all the little oats that were clearly poised and ready for this jailbreak.

Luckily, the little oat accident did not impact my cookies and they made it to the bake sale and sold briskly, which is what is really important.  Not the fact that I trashed my kitchen or the fact that I went with a basic cookie.  But really, f#@k a steel cut oat.


Friday, March 22, 2019

Did I Just Cheat on Italy? Part Two

Being that we were flying into Spain for free and because we were going off-season and managed to pick up a Madrid apartment on Air B and B for an insanely low price, we decided to make this trip short, sweet and focused on fact finding; kind of like meeting for coffee on your first date.  We were looking to preserve vacation time for a longer trip later in the year, so we left on the Thursday night flight of a Monday holiday weekend, flew overnight to Madrid and had a Friday through Tuesday trip that cost us only two vacation days.

Flying on an overnight flight deposits you in the country of your choice at some point in the morning (depending on where you fly to and from).  This was a process that we were familiar with from making the overnight flight from JFK to Fiumicino in Rome.  We knew that we had to do our best to sleep on the plane. A lifelong fidget, I have never been very good at this, but I usually land at my destination filled with so much adreneline, that I can hit the ground running and make it to mid-afternoon before I crash hard and need a nap. 

When we de-planed and headed through Barajas airport in Madrid, the first billboard that I saw was this, which tickled me and somehow made me feel instantly at home.  I am a sucker for a sense of humor.


We had short-listed certain foods and attractions for our five day trip and the first thing that was on our mind were churros. Let me start by saying, there are better churros and worse churros, but to me, there is no such thing as bad churros.  Our first stop was to a chain type churro shop on the way to our apartment and with luggage in hand, we rolled our bags in and got our first churro of the trip.  Maybe because we were hungry or maybe because they were actually good, we really enjoyed them.  We knew that there might be better ones in our future as we had plans to hit San Gines for their exceptionally rich and rightfully famous hot chocolate later in the trip, but we needed to break the seal on our Madrid vacation immediately.
The first churro is good, even if it's not the best churro.

We did not hold it against our first churro shop that they sell a "Pikachurro"
Being that it was January, there was not as much outdoor dining and cafe seating as there normally would be, but I give the shop owners credit for their creative approach to offering a warm place to sit outside for their hardier patrons.  Space heaters and furry blankets were a common sight.


After breakfast, we checked into our Air B&B and set out for the first sight on our agenda:  The Mercado de San Miguel.  We arrived at this beautiful glass jewel box of a market at 11:00 am and found it busy and full of people that had no qualms about having wine and vermut prior to lunch hour; we fell in line. I can easily say that this was love at first sight.  This was to be the first of three visits that we would make to the market while in Madrid. We were captivated by this place for the variety of food and drink that was available and for the sights, sounds and smells that filled the air. 

Whipped Burrata. Need I say more?

So many of the tapas that are available in the market are savory, umami-bombs that pair amazingly well with wine and vermut.

Stunning produce.

This looked like art to me.

Vermut at 11:00 am? Don't mind if I do.




On tap, as it should be.


San Miguel Market at night


When we were doing research for our Spain trip, my husband was bingeing on travel videos and I had walked through the room while he was watching one and saw the statue of "El oso y el madroño", which is a bear eating strawberries.  Seeing it quickly out of the corner of my eye, I yelled back to him, "what is that? A cat eating broccoli?".  That is what we referred to this famous statue in Puerta Del Sol as for the entire trip.  Try and get that image out of your head. You're welcome.
The "cat eating broccoli" statue that is actually a bear eating strawberries.

Since we were doing a quick trip, we felt that at least one guided tour would be beneficial, so we booked a Tapas and History Crawl with Devour Tours, which was fantastic.  I would highly recommend this tour company for their expertise and professionalism. We ate and drank across four bars until we thought we were going to burst. The tour was filled with great information and even better food.



We also learned on our trip that Madrid has casinos.  The most unassuming, quiet and elegant casinos that I have ever been in. So quiet and unassuming that they were almost not fun, but that is not what we went for.  What we went for was food, drink, art, architecture and churros.  We got all of that and more, packing in a ton of fun in a five day trip.  


Stunning.

One of several Patatas Bravas.  This one was from "Las Bravas".

Gran Via in all it's splendor.

La Hora de Vermut, which is technically between lunch and dinner but actually all day, every day.

My first lambchop since I was about seven. Amazing.

Someone or perhaps some thousands of people have been rubbing his behind ( I see your hiney, so bright and shiny....).

We came home from this five day trip to Madrid completely satisfied and ready to go back.  Will it supplant Italy as our number one go-to?  No, but hopefully, it will serve as an add-on to a trip to Italy as country hopping is easy and inexpensive within Europe, thanks to carriers like Easy Jet.  Next time, Granada and Seville.  But first, I have to make sure that Rome isn't mad at me. I plan on some make-up pasta and a nice Brunello.

P.S. The churros and hot chocolate at San Gines were everything.  This alone was worth the trip.






Sunday, March 17, 2019

Did I Just Cheat on Italy? Part one...

It wasn't really planned. It just sort of happened...or at least that's what I told myself.
After years of traveling for both business and pleasure, my husband and I finally racked up enough frequent flyer miles to book a trip outside the country; at the same time. That had never happened before, one or both of our flights were always on our dime . And it would seem like the obvious choice that we would jump on the horn to Delta Airlines and arrange what we had been faithfully doing for the last ten years; a trip to Italy. As a matter of fact, we traveled to Italy so often that when I responded to my mother's inquiry of "where are you going on vacation this year?" with Italy, she would roll her eyes and say "ugh, again?". But there are no limits to my love of Italy. There were regions still to be discovered and our favorite places, like Rome and Palermo magically offered up surprises and new experiences with every visit. So why did we plunk those miles down on a trip to Spain?
Strangely, it had nothing at all to do with Italy, which is kind of like saying "baby, it's not you, it's me". For years, our neice has been extolling the virtues of Spain, having studied there for two semesters and travelled the entire country. She knew that the wine and tapas culture of Spain was a perfect fit for us, but we had previously been in such a passionate affair with Italy, that we couldn't concieve of a plane ride that delivered us to anywhere but back to her loving arms. Honestly, I blame it on Japan (needle scratch). Yes, Japan.
In September of 2017, my husband took a two week business trip to Japan. Accompanying him on this trip was a hulking a six foot six, bald headed, goateed giant of a computer programmer named Dale, who had never left the country before. Always one to immerse in the local culture and do his travel homework, my husband took it as his duty to introduce Dale to the sights sounds and tastes of Japan. In many ways, this posed new challenges to be solved and broke him of the comfort and complacency that we felt when travelling to Italy. Shortly after that trip, he started to tiptoe into research about Spain.
It all began very innocently. A YouTube video here, a dinner at a local Spanish restaurant there. We even took another trip to Italy in Spring of '18, which provided the mileage boost that we needed to get the free tickets. Before we knew it, we were on the seven hour flight to Madrid.
Sitting here, one month post-trip, all I can think about is how and when we can go back. I am completely torn between two lovers and definitely feeling like a fool. To be continued...


New Year 2019 Post - Redux

This was originally posted on my Wix blog under the title 2019:

Oh hey, 2019. I didn't see you there. I wasn't really expecting you to be up this early. Come sit with me (pats couch cushion).
Listen, I don't want to lay any heavy responsibility on you so early in the year, but we need to talk. No, no, don't get up. Please, stay and hear me out. It's important that you hear what I have to say.
Now, I understand that you are not responsible for the sins of the years that preceded you, but I do believe that you need to be cognizant of their missteps and mindful not to repeat their more problematic actions. Yes, yes, I understand that you had nothing to do with the events of the past, but their legacy is not good and I see this as your opportunity to prove that you are not all the same.
Let's start with 2018. I know that you two are close and I don't want to speak ill of the past, but, did you see the wave of amazing people that 2018 took? Anthony Bourdain? Aretha? Don't you think it was a little selfish to take so many talented people in one year? And 2018 took one of my own inner circle, far too soon. What the hell was that about? I can't get past the way that 2018 took from us. The greed is astounding. The last three years, in fact have allowed loss from attacks of hate and terror that never should have happened. Have these years no shame in their reckless permissiveness of hate and rage?
2019, you need to be the year that makes a shift away from hate, that stops freight train of negative emotion that is fueling our national discourse and making us mistrustful of others and of one another. It sits squarely on your shoulders to see that we make a move toward kindness, toward unity and toward inclusion. I know that it is a big responsibility, but I am confident that you can do it. My greatest New Year's wish is that you find the confidence in yourself to make it happen. Now go make me proud and if you find yourself having moments of doubt, just come sit with me again and I'll talk you through it. You can do it. Prove me right. Please?

Holiday 2018 Post Redeux

This was originally posted on my Wix blog, under the title "Turkeys, Elves and the Definition of Insanity":

Almost every year, I find myself hosting Christmas for my large, extended family. Either by my own hand or by my husband generously electing me to the post of party queen, every December plays out like the last. Part of my problem is that I hate uncomfortable silences and when the question of who will be hosting Christmas starts to get thrown around in the months leading up to December, the silence of the response is usually deafening. I find myself twisting uncomfortably in the silence and when I no longer take the cricket-song that I hear through the hollow void of replies, I blurt out my bid for it. This has resulted in me winning 27 out of 27times, uncontested. Tell them what I won Johnny: Announcer voice: You've won five days of cleaning, seven trips to the grocery store, nine hours of cooking, three days of decorating, two trips to the liquor store, a beer run, a trip to the party store and two insanely swollen feet!

Luckily, the same does not hold true with Thanksgiving. My sister-in-law loves to do Thanksgiving and I would go as far as to say that she has a lock on the holiday. Thanksgiving is the one holiday of the year that I can guarantee that I can be a guest and that my feet won't swell and throb like two Smithfield hams at the end of the day. It's a holiday where I get a job or a few jobs and I am joyful in the execution of these jobs. You want a sweet potato casserole? I'm your girl. What's that you say? A Chocolate Cream pie? Why of course and I'll throw in a Lemon Pound Cake for good measure.

This year, I was so blissful in my guesting duties that I made a pie, a cake, the Serious Eats Hassleback Potato Gratin (you MUST! Really!) and I had energy leftover to throw together a spur of the moment cranberry sauce. It's easy to be a sport when you haven't been washing floors, scrubbing toilets, vacuuming, dusting and pulling the gizzards out of the ass-end of a giant bird for the last 48 hours.

The burden of hosting is something that is not completely understood by my husband, who seems to think that hosting consists of making a beer run and having the freedom to start cocktail hour earlier than would be socially acceptable on any other day of the year. Every year he looks at me on the morning after a Christmas soiree in almost complete confusion, as I sit with my feet up, on the verge of tears, with a combination of bewilderment and exhaustion on my face over having survived the hosting of another family Christmas celebration. Every year, it pushes me to the brink and every year (like the definition of insanity), I do it again, expecting a different result. The need for change is clearly on me.

So this year, I will wait in discomfort for someone to throw their Santa hat into the ring. I am not going to volunteer, no matter how deafening the silence becomes. I will duct tape my own mouth closed, if need be. I will be resolute in my decision to stand down. But...you might want to check my feet on December 26th. If they are spilling out of my shoes and pulsating like a defective neon sign, then my resolution wasn't worth the Christmas wrapping it was written on.


March 17 2019 P.S. - I did not cave. Man, my feet feel good!